Tuesday November 14, 2017

While most now have a cell phone, many still use those rusted, quarter-eating boxes. According to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s 2017 monitoring report, payphones in Canada made $22 million CAD in 2016. The US numbers are similar: The FCC reports that in 2015 payphones made $286 million, which is comparable for a population ten times the size of Canada’s.

It might not be much in the grand scheme of the multi-billion-dollar telecommunications industry, but it goes to show that some old and decrepit (and, crucially, shared) technologies still play a key role in many people’s lives. Payphones are out here making money while some of the newest, hottest, and most "successful" tech companies around are still figuring out how to get their revenues to climb ahead of their yearly losses.